Edith Layton (8 page)

He looked at her for another moment, then picked up the reins. They drove in silence. Soon the noise of the streets made that seem necessary, since the roads were so crowded, they’d have had to shout to be heard. As they went on past the fashionable districts to those of shops and craftsmen, they came to streets that were even more crowded and with people who were less well dressed. Damon looked at Gilly.

“Go on,” she said. “We aren’t halfway there yet.”

He frowned, but drove on.

The streets became dirtier, noisier. The houses at the sides of the road were older, increasingly less cared for, and there were obviously more people living in them. The vendors crying their wares became louder, more poorly dressed. The traffic changed as much as the surroundings did. Lone horsemen and carriages became scarce, carts, wagons, and barrows common. The horses they saw were heavy cart animals, and there were as many carts propelled by humans as horses. There were more dogs and children in the streets, and fewer of them under anyone’s control. And the streets themselves were filthy, and reeked.

Damon was frowning fiercely now, his face set in an unaccustomed scowl. “Is this some sort of a joke?” he finally asked after he had to pull his team to a sudden stand because of a wave of ragged, screeching children who came pouring across his path.

“I wish it were,” she murmured. “No. It’s a thing words can’t tell as well as eyes can.” She didn’t speak again until they’d gone a few cluttered, noisy streets farther. “Here!” she called. “Pull over to the curbside now. No one will harm the carriage, it looks too fine. They don’t court troubles with the gentry, and besides, it’s broad daylight. No—don’t give them a penny!” she cried, shaking her head at the small crowd of urchins who had stopped to goggle at their carriage. “Be off!” she told them, brandishing her parasol. “No coins, nothing for you here. Maybe you have something for him, though? This bloke I’m with? Like information? He’s with the Redbreasts, looking for the wretches who
stole my…There, that’s done it. No one will bother us now,” she said with satisfaction as the crowd, child and man, scattered at the mention of the Bow Street Runners.

“Well,” Gilly said, looking around, “I suppose this will do.”

They’d pulled to the side of the road just off a busy intersection. The shops and houses that lined the streets here were so close together that if they didn’t have signs with garish pictures of the goods for sale, it would have been hard to tell which were homes and which were not. Laundry hanging from windows competed with clothing hanging for sale, and all the goods were equally shabby. The streets leading from the intersection were narrow, dark, and winding. Some had arches over them; others had drunken-looking buildings that leaned toward each other over the cobbles so sunlight seldom reached them even on the brightest days. This wasn’t one of them.

Gilly glanced around through narrowed eyes. “Yes,” she said. “At least this way you can see what I’m saying. So, what do you think of this place, eh? Ever seen the like?”

Damon gave the street a brief glance, but his gaze was keener when he turned it back to her. “Of course. Here, on the Continent, and in America. The poor have to live somewhere.”

“Have you ever lived in such?”

He was taken aback. “No. But I’ve visited such. When I was at university it was considered fashionable to mingle with the lower depths and come down here at night to go to taverns and…such. When I took a
Grand Tour, dropping in on this kind of district was as important as seeing landmarks. When I went to America, I went to slums on business many times. They were different there, rawer, newer, with mud instead of cobbles on the ground, and makeshift tents or wooden hovels instead of tenements. But poverty’s the same everywhere.”

Gilly’s bonnet bobbed as she nodded. “As I thought. You came to such places for sport or business. If we went a few streets farther you’d see much worse, places no one in their right mind would go to for fun or profit.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said calmly, though his eyes were dark as slate, troubled as they searched her face. “I’ve seen worse, too,” he added, and waited for her response.

At last she looked full at him. He hoped he’d never see such despair in her face again.

“I come from here. I’m not an impostor, I never pretended to be something I’m not,” she said in a rush, trying to get the whole story out and over, like plucking out a splinter so the hurt would come before her brain could register it, before her own hand wavered at its task. “Everyone knows I’m Sinclair’s ward, and they assume my parents were old friends of his, but he never knew them. We met just four years past.

“My sister, Betsy, sold flowers in the park. I worked at what I could turn my hand to and took care of us both, though the money she brought in helped. Any money did,” she said bitterly. “We were alone. My father was a merchant seaman, but after he married he lost the taste for long sea voyages. Maybe he knew
how hard it would be for our mother to live alone and raise us by herself. So he worked loading cargo on the docks. He dropped one day. His heart just gave out. Betsy don’t remember him, she was only a babe. My mother was too proud to crawl to her family for charity. Well, I don’t blame her. She’d gone to London to make her fortune against their advice, and with a sailor, at that. So she didn’t ask them for help. But our dad didn’t leave us a cent, and she’d no trade to turn to, except for being a wife and mother, and there’s too many of them down here.

“She didn’t have to starve, though. She was pretty enough to make her fortune on her back. But she was too proud for that, too. She took in washing—until she took a chill one day, and sickened and died soon after. So I turned my hand to what I could to keep Betsy and me from the poorhouse, or worse.

“I kept us together for eight years, but it was getting harder by the time we met Sinclair. I was nearly sixteen and Betsy eight. He hired her to come to his wedding as a flower girl as a surprise for his lady. They’d bought flowers from her when they were courting, you see, and he thought it would warm his lady’s heart to see the little flower girl all cleaned up, carrying the flowers for their wedding. It certainly warmed our pockets. Well, no harm in it for one day, I thought when I got wind of it,” Gilly said, her accent becoming gruffer, rougher, as she traveled back in her thoughts. “A viscount and a lady, after all.

“But then I saw them, and got to thinking. Then I heard they were bound for the countryside after their wedding and I thought some more. So I came to them
the very next morning and asked if they’d take Betsy with them. I hated to part from her. But this is no place to raise a girl, and there were those who had their eyes on her for blanket work and I couldn’t be everywhere at once, could I?”

Damon didn’t breathe a word. He was astonished and dismayed. She was talking rapidly, changing before his eyes from a delicate lady of fashion to a rough and grieved child.

“They were good enough to take her. But then I heard there might be…some irregularity in their marriage. It was a hum, nothing but a lie, but I didn’t know that. But Sinclair had gone back to London, and Betsy was alone with Bridget in the countryside. That I did know. So I went to bring Betsy back. Once there, I stayed on with Bridget. After Lord Sinclair returned from London and cleared up the matter, they persuaded me to stay on with them forever. So, here I am. And there you are.”

“Am I?” Damon asked, watching her closely. “There’s a lot you haven’t said. Left alone to cope at such a young age? How did you earn money?”

She laughed harshly. “Think I was petticoat goods? Think again. Never. I wouldn’t sell myself. I learned from my mother, and from watching the streets, too. There’s money in the flesh trade, to be sure. But it goes as fast as a girl’s looks do. There’s a deal you don’t know, true,” she said, avoiding his eyes, “but I didn’t sell my body for anything but hard labor.”

She glowered at him, as though he’d said something insulting rather than just watching her so closely. She lifted her head, her eyes demon gold. “I
gleaned nails from the streets and resold them; I picked coals that hadn’t burned from the slag heap to resell, too. Odd bits of bottles, rags, string—there’s nothing that can’t be used again. And kids are closer to the ground and can find things faster than older gleaners. Then I learned that a quick mind beats a strong back. I ran with a pack of other children who taught me how to turn my hand to profitable work—selling off things the peddlers don’t want to throw away at the end of the day. Then selling better things, because the faster you get rid of their stock the more they trust you with new goods.

“I learned a line of patter,” she said proudly. “I learned who the laziest and simplest vendors were. I learned how to patch up old goods to look like new. I even did street labor when the money pinched.”

“They hire females for street labor? You amaze me. The rest, I can see,” Damon said softly, warily. “But Gilly, that tries even my credulity.”

“You’re right. They don’t hire females for that kind of work,” Gilly said proudly, raising her chin. “And they didn’t. This part of London isn’t a safe place for a girl alone. So I wasn’t one after…after Mama died. I dressed as a lad. I carried a knife. Everyone knew it, because I had to use it now and then. So those who knew the truth didn’t say. Those who didn’t never got a chance to find out.”

“As a
boy
?” he asked.

She moved restlessly. “Why not? No one notices a street rat. And the other rats are too smart to care.”

He sat and studied her. The delicate line of her clenched jaw, the slender arch of her eyebrows, the
small fine-boned hands. He shook his head. “No, even before you became a woman, I can’t see it. They had to know.”

“Hah!” she said with the ghost of a real laugh. “Easy to say
now
. The quality never looked beneath the dirt. Only Ewen knew. He knew right off. Bridget didn’t. Ewen’s friend Rafe didn’t know, neither. Even Drum didn’t guess until he was told!”

“Even the great Earl of Drummond?” Damon said, with the first smile he’d shown since she began talking. “Good to know his halo slipped, if only once.”

She flushed. “Well, but he’s a downy one in the normal way of things,” she said defensively. “Though I still tease him about it now, he didn’t have an inkling when we met. But once he found out he did all he could to turn me into a proper female. He taught me to speak more correctly. He helped with my manners and deportment, too. He’s no saint but he was good to me, and if I go on about it, it’s because I’m grateful. I never forget a friend.”

“Don’t apologize, I have older brothers,” Damon said gently, “and I think the sun rises and sets on them, too.”

She plucked at the folds of her parasol instead of looking at him. “But there it is. I was a slum child, and I masqueraded as a lad until I met up with the Sinclairs. It’s time I told you. I feel badly about it—but in a strange way, better now.” She met his eyes again. “It’s right that you should know. No one else outside our circle does…or so I think. But sometimes I think that somehow Lord Wycoff does, which is why he pursues me—me, of all the other young unmarried females in
the
ton
. He usually only hunts married women. But he met up with me when I first came to the Sinclairs. And I was so awkward with being a proper female then and he’s so clever. I think he guesses more than most people. But you know? That may be why I feel more comfortable with him than I ought. Because I don’t like to live a lie.”

Gilly faced Damon squarely. “This one’s gone on long enough. I like you too well to keep up the pretense. Now, tell me you could seriously consider taking this false engagement of ours one day further!”

He was silent. She put out a hand and laid it on his sleeve. “Please understand that I understand,” she said. “No one will think the worse of you when we break it off. Not Bridget, Ewen, or anyone. That’s why I didn’t even want to start this thing and why I think it’s time to end it now. Imagine if others found out! If people knew, they’d think I played a vile trick on you. A no one, a less-than-that, a slum brat dressed up in lady’s clothing, trying to snare herself a gentleman! Not just society. What would your family think? And who could blame them?

“I didn’t mean to deceive you, Damon,” she said when he didn’t speak, just stared at her, his eyes gone stormy and still. “But it’s better to end this before it begins to hurt anyone.”

He nodded. Her heart broke from its steady beat, just once. But then she nodded, too. “Well, and so,” she said, swallowing hard, trying to think what to say next.

“It would hurt,” he said. “I think it might just about kill me. But tell me, Gilly, would it hurt you?”

“Of course,” she said, only talking to drown out her unruly thoughts. “Of course, we’re friends…”

“I don’t see how what you’ve told me changes that.”

“Don’t you?” she asked, her voice growing thin. “Listen carefully, then. I was like any of the children you see running through the streets here, a mongrel, a castoff, a homeless thing fighting to stay alive. Clever, I grant, for here I am as you see me now. But in your world, Damon…” She shook her head, biting her lower lip to keep it from showing all the self-pity and loathing she felt. “I’m…I am not at all ‘the thing’!”

She laughed. “That’s an expression Drum taught me. Much better than the one I was going to use. The one I was born and bred to use. As you were born and bred to better than me.”

Now Damon moved. He broke from his rigidity. He grasped both her hands hard, his eyes blazing, his voice angry. “There’s none better! You’re worthy of better than me, Gilly Giles. You’re brave and honest, and good to the bone. That you survived is a miracle, that you grew to be so honorable and fine is not a surprise. Because goodness and valor is in the bone, not in the name. Never
—never
apologize to me!”

Her eyes widened. He loosened his tight clasp on her hands but didn’t let them go. “Yes,” he added after a long indrawn breath, “you’re right. Now is as good a time as any to end our charade.”

“Well,” she said, so buffeted by emotion she couldn’t find another thing to say.